2000 Nuits-Saint-Georges Les Pruliers 1er Cru

The finishing dates for the malolactic fermentations at this estate ranged widely for the 2001s, from January to September of 2002, and the unracked wines were thus at very different stages of evolution in November. Vincent Lecheneaut told me he did a suppler extraction in 2001, featuring fewer punchdowns of the cap: twice daily at the beginning of the fermentation and then less frequently toward the end. The tannins were not completely ripe in 2001, he explained, and he wanted to avoid getting bitter tannins. Grape sugars prior to chaptalization were generally in the 11.5% to 12.2% range in the domain's village holdings and about 12.5% for the premier crus. The estate's 2000s have gone into bottle fresher than most, but do not show the early personality of the vintage's most expressive examples: time will tell if they blossom in bottle and show a more graceful evolution than the vintage's less primary examples. (Robert Kacher Selections, Washington, D.C.)

Vincent and Philippe Lecheneaut did two sortings of the fruit in 2000, a severe one in the vines and another on a table de trie "We had a lot of warm and humid weather," said Vincent. "The grapes were ripe and starting to fall off the vines, so we had to be vigilant about rot, especially in Chambolle-Musigny. But in a difficult year like 2000, when you do the work and it pays off, it that much more satisfying." The Lecheneauts have been doing less frequent, and gentler, pigeages since 1999, and today's wines are more aromatically perfumed without any obvious loss of structure. (Robert Kacher Selections, Washington, D.C.)